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Authors: Ryu Murakami
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the past six years: a crocodile. Six years earlier her parents had bought it at a department store with the guarantee that it would grow to be no more than a meter long. “Eats raw meat or fish; change water weekly; just add a rubber tree and you’re in the Amazon!” the ad read. Anemone had been tempted by the piranhas, but when she found out how long a crocodile could live, her mind was made up. The creature was installed in a meter-square tank, and all was well in the Amazon until one night six months later when Anemone woke to the sound of shattering glass. No one had noticed that the crocodile had long since outgrown the tank. Anemone’s parents phoned the department-store pet shop.
“The variety we sell was developed in Sri Lanka by selective breeding of the Congo Pygmy Crocodile, which comes from equatorial Africa. It’s impossible that one could be more than fifty centimeters long, maximum. There is a chance, of course, that some other variety got mixed in with the shipment from Singapore—the famous crocodile garden at the zoo in Singapore.”
Anemone’s pet got bigger every day. In a year’s time, it measured a full two meters. A write-up in a newspaper prompted a visit from scientists at a reptile research center who came to the conclusion that the animal was an Indian gavial. The crocodilian order, they said, included at least three families: crocodiles, alligators, and gavials. The latter have long, slender muzzles that flatten into an octagonal shape at the end. The long snout and the odd, bulging eyes give the gavial a slightly comical appearance, explaining perhaps why gavial babies once enjoyed tremendous, if short-lived, popularity as pets in a certain city in the U.S. Children, it seems, loved the baby gavials, but the parents were less charmed, and the fad came to an end when hundreds were flushed down toilets all over town. When they disappeared down the drain, they were no bigger than a man’s finger, but some managed to survive and prosper in the pipes, and eventually they attacked and killed a sewer worker. Faced with dozens of huge monsters in its bowels, the city government had called in the army; gasoline was fed into the pipes, and the animals were burned alive. End of story.
But Anemone’s pet was already too big to fit down the toilet, and, besides, she had finally decided to give it a name—up to this point it had been simply “crocodile.” She called it Gulliver. And it gave her a thrill to think how far Gulliver had come from that tropical river, and even more of one to think that she was now his owner. What, she wondered, were the odds of Gulliver livingin a bathtub in the Meguro ward of Tokyo? Millions to one, at least…
By this time the damage done by Gulliver’s food bill—ten kilos of meat a day—was severe, not to mention the damage to the nerves of Anemone’s mother, who was no longer able to use the shower. Her father explained matters to Anemone as best he could and began to make inquiries at the zoo; but Anemone refused to even consider parting with Gulliver.
No one could touch Gulliver except Anemone, and she herself made it a rule to always enter his room crawling on her belly. Since crocodiles were always creeping along low to the ground, she reasoned, they must feel as though they’re being looked down on—and nobody would like that much. If she got down to their level, they might think of her as a friend. Gulliver, she found, was very fond of music, and would sit peacefully listening to anything she played for him as she cleaned his teeth with a screwdriver. His favorite, though, was David Bowie’s “Uranus.”
On the day her father had arranged for the men from the zoo to take Gulliver away, Anemone threatened suicide, but that was nothing compared to Gulliver’s show. The zookeepers had none of the luxury of space afforded by a jungle river, and in the cramped bathroom the situation got a little out of hand. When the first man tried to sedate him,
“The variety we sell was developed in Sri Lanka by selective breeding of the Congo Pygmy Crocodile, which comes from equatorial Africa. It’s impossible that one could be more than fifty centimeters long, maximum. There is a chance, of course, that some other variety got mixed in with the shipment from Singapore—the famous crocodile garden at the zoo in Singapore.”
Anemone’s pet got bigger every day. In a year’s time, it measured a full two meters. A write-up in a newspaper prompted a visit from scientists at a reptile research center who came to the conclusion that the animal was an Indian gavial. The crocodilian order, they said, included at least three families: crocodiles, alligators, and gavials. The latter have long, slender muzzles that flatten into an octagonal shape at the end. The long snout and the odd, bulging eyes give the gavial a slightly comical appearance, explaining perhaps why gavial babies once enjoyed tremendous, if short-lived, popularity as pets in a certain city in the U.S. Children, it seems, loved the baby gavials, but the parents were less charmed, and the fad came to an end when hundreds were flushed down toilets all over town. When they disappeared down the drain, they were no bigger than a man’s finger, but some managed to survive and prosper in the pipes, and eventually they attacked and killed a sewer worker. Faced with dozens of huge monsters in its bowels, the city government had called in the army; gasoline was fed into the pipes, and the animals were burned alive. End of story.
But Anemone’s pet was already too big to fit down the toilet, and, besides, she had finally decided to give it a name—up to this point it had been simply “crocodile.” She called it Gulliver. And it gave her a thrill to think how far Gulliver had come from that tropical river, and even more of one to think that she was now his owner. What, she wondered, were the odds of Gulliver livingin a bathtub in the Meguro ward of Tokyo? Millions to one, at least…
By this time the damage done by Gulliver’s food bill—ten kilos of meat a day—was severe, not to mention the damage to the nerves of Anemone’s mother, who was no longer able to use the shower. Her father explained matters to Anemone as best he could and began to make inquiries at the zoo; but Anemone refused to even consider parting with Gulliver.
No one could touch Gulliver except Anemone, and she herself made it a rule to always enter his room crawling on her belly. Since crocodiles were always creeping along low to the ground, she reasoned, they must feel as though they’re being looked down on—and nobody would like that much. If she got down to their level, they might think of her as a friend. Gulliver, she found, was very fond of music, and would sit peacefully listening to anything she played for him as she cleaned his teeth with a screwdriver. His favorite, though, was David Bowie’s “Uranus.”
On the day her father had arranged for the men from the zoo to take Gulliver away, Anemone threatened suicide, but that was nothing compared to Gulliver’s show. The zookeepers had none of the luxury of space afforded by a jungle river, and in the cramped bathroom the situation got a little out of hand. When the first man tried to sedate him,
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